It amazes me that there are still some people out there complaining that the pandaren “don’t have any basis in lore” or “are just an April Fool’s joke.” At this point in the game, the pandaren have a stronger place in the lore of Azeroth than even humans do. They have a much richer backstory and a more complex culture than any other race in the game, and their culture and story are all there in the game for us to experience without having to read novels or comic books to understand it.

Now, that’s an entirely separate question from whether you like the pandaren or not. You are completely free to like or dislike anything in the game and no one can tell you otherwise. I’m not all that excited about the pandaren myself. De gustibus non est disputandum and all that. But no one can say that Blizzard has not done an amazing job of developing and realizing the pandaren as a race.

May 18, 2012

Subtlety really isn’t a big thing in WoW questing, but it’s hard to drop obscure hints when you know most people don’t even bother with quest text and just want to know who to kill next and how many bear intestines to bring back.

December 10, 2010

I wasn’t actually there at midnight on Tuesday. I’ve grown too old to stay up all night playing WoW; I need my sleep. (Plus, I was up early in the morning on Monday to make pizza for a departmental party, but that’s another story.) So, I can’t speak from any experience about what it was like at 12:01 Tuesday morning, but I feel pretty sure that the population of Gilneas skyrocketed in those first few minutes.

I haven’t even started my worgen character yet. I’ve been holding back to let the initial wave go by, but you can be sure that it won’t be long before another furry face joins the wolfpack roaming Azeroth. (And no, I will not be naming my worgen any of the names shown in that last panel– although if there were such a thing as a bard class I would so have a worgen bard named Rolf.)